Variety Promo Booklet Features Zero Dark Thirty-Eight Pages

Hoping to inject some momentum into the final balloting phase for the Oscars, which begins tomorrow and ends February 19, Columbia Pictures has turned a ton of PR cash into a poly-bagged extra for today’s editions of Daily Variety. You know it’s a major bit of marketing when it gets its own in-house blog item:

The 38-page, full-color bound booklet features a kudos roll call, critical praise and screenplay excerpts, as well as director Kathryn Bigelow’s Los Angeles Times op-ed defending the film’s depiction of torture.

The final words on the back page are a quote from Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune: “A movie that will endure.”

Varietymay have lost an Oscar weekend charity event sponsorship to its cross-Curson rival, but as far as hard-copy FYC materials, it appears on this particular day to be king.